Canon announced earlier this week that its new IXUS 300 HS digital compact (also known as the Powershot SD4000 IS in the US and the IXY 30S in Japan)will be released by the end of this month.
This IXUS is a rather interesting one because Canon is positioning this as a camera that can “take photos in beautiful and dark scenes”
Shooting under low-light conditions (read: indoors) is something that most compact digital cameras can do, but not do well. This is because they have small image sensors, which don’t lend themselves to shooting at high sensitivity level. Sure, one can set a higher sensitivity level from ISO 400 upward, but one also gets a healthy level of image noise that can get too undesirable. One can brighten up a scene with the camera’s built-in flash, but it’s not powerful enough in most cases, and will give the deer-in-the-headlights look to one’s human subject.
Currently, there are only a handful of cameras out there that do reasonably well in dark/indoor conditions without using a flash, the Panasonix Lumix DMC-LX3 (and its twin, the Leica D-Lux 4), the Canon G11, and the Canon S90, to name a few. These cameras do it with fast lens (f/2.8 and faster), and an image sensor with less megapixels (around 10MP) than your usual consumer-ZOMG-15-megapixel-digicam (quality over quantity).
Canon IXUS 300 HS in Silver
The IXUS 300 HS is seen to be joining that group of cameras, with what Canon has dubbed the “HS System” and the “Bright Lens”. These refer two aspects of the IXUS 300 HS that will improve pictures in dark situations.
The HS system (for High Sensitivity) is the combination of a back-lit image sensor similar to (if not the same as) the Canon S90′s and Canon’s DIGIC 4 processing engine. The sensor enables high ISO shooting with reduced noise, and DIGIC 4 provides additional noise reduction.
Bright Lens refers to the IXUS 300 HS’s large aperture/lens opening of f/2.0 at its widest focal length. With a large aperture, more light can go to the sensor, enabling one to shoot with less resultant noise overall, especially at ISO 400 above. The camera’s lens focal length is a useful 3.8x zoom range with a 35mm equivalent of 28mm to 105mm.
Together with built-in optical image stabilization (IS) to help minimize camera shake due to shaky hands, the IXUS’s HS and Bright Lens should let most shooters take better images indoors. Canon Rumors has a few pics at ISO1600 and ISO 3200 from a hands-on session with a pre-production camera.
The camera does not have full Manual control over exposure unlike the G11 and S90, but it does have shutter-priority (Tv) and aperture priority (Av) modes, which offer a significant amount of creative control when shooting. Other features include HD video capture capability and a few funky effects, such as a 240FPS (frames-per-second) video mode that can make things go in slow motion.
The stylish IXUS 300 HS comes in several colors: Black, Silver, White, Red and Yellow. The first two colors are your usual gadget color scheme, but the last three colors are bright and will appeal to those who like their gadgets to be a bit more fun.
This camera isn’t going to replace a DSLR for image quality, and won’t let you have full manual control like the Canon S90, Canon G10/G11, and Panasonic’s LX3. But then again, it’s not going to have the price tag of those and it will be a great point-and-shoot camera to take around with you all the time, even indoors.
As Canon says on its Japanese website “simply press the shutter button, you can take pretty pictures”.
Canon Japan has set a release date of the 27th of May for the Japanese market’s IXY 30S, and we can expect a similar release date for the other regions in the world.
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